


Necessary If Not True

by kristophine



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 13:24:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4921261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kristophine/pseuds/kristophine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Holmes walks in that night John thinks nothing of it. It is only another night, wet and foggy and cold, mud on Holmes’ pant-leg and boots, the dim glitter of firelight on shining black buttons, the soft textures of tweed and leather.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Necessary If Not True

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Необходимо, если ложь](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5677198) by [Oruga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oruga/pseuds/Oruga)



When Holmes walks in that night John thinks nothing of it. It is only another night, wet and foggy and cold, mud on Holmes’ pant-leg and boots, the dim glitter of firelight on shining black buttons, the soft textures of tweed and leather. John is a man of letters, which means he must see nearly everything, but because he sees all, he observes nothing.

Holmes says, “Watson, I need you.”

John glances up from the floor—inspecting the rug again, the vague imprint of Holmes’ boots—and says, “Well, certainly, my dear fellow.”

“My case involves an invert. I require your knowledge of inverts’ custom.”

John feels heat, which seems to simultaneously start at his collar and move upward, and at his hairline, and move down. He considers, briefly, denial. He knows Holmes could track the progression of thoughts in his face if he chose. He is not disappointed: Holmes says, abruptly, “It is rather obvious, I’m afraid. But we do not need to discuss it at length. I only need to know what manner of greeting and trivial chatter will allow me to pass as a regular sort of client.”

His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. _Rather obvious, I’m afraid._ He could still attempt denial, but after this much silence it would lose all its strength as an argument. But it is not as simple as answering Holmes’ requests for information, like the well-trained dog that he is. He takes a deep breath and lets it out in a gust.

“How is it obvious?” he asks, instead.

Holmes meets his eyes and the expression on his face is a cool one, but familiar. It is the face Holmes puts on when he is ill at ease himself. The recognition is perhaps somewhat soothing.

“Must I go into it, old chap?” Holmes says, with a trace of ruefulness.

“I’m afraid so. I shouldn’t like the knowledge to become—public.”

“Service in Afghanistan; exposure to military custom, frequently includes sodomy. Knowledge of women across three continents? Bold and somewhat inappropriate statement to put in print, were it true, and yet necessary if not true at all. Miss Morstan? Chronically ill. Obviously dying. If obvious to me, then surely obvious to you. To have proposed marriage to her in her state, incomprehensible if you were behaving rationally, as it must put you at some risk of contracting her disease, and yet necessary if what you truly desired was a wife who would leave you a patina of social acceptability combined with the freedom to live as you wished. Well worth the risk from that perspective. Also clarifies the lack of that detail in your published account.”

“Stop,” says John.

Holmes, for once in his blessed, merciless life, stops.

John closes his eyes. His face feels numb. This is worse than being shot at, if not worse than being shot. “We’re not even wed yet.”

“And you shouldn’t be. Bowing to social convention is, at best, cowardice.”

“And at worst?”

“A profound and terrible betrayal of yourself.”

“How many other people know?”

“No one, to best of my knowledge.” Holmes eases himself into a chair, finally. “Apparently your ruse is working.”

“It’s not a ruse. I am very fond of her.”

“Fond enough, at any rate.”

John pauses. “Mary,” he says, and has to try again, “Mary is a good woman. I can make her happy for a little while. She needs me, as much as I need her.”

“But you love me,” says Holmes. He says it easily. He says it like something he’s already proved, a simple fact, like blood under fingernails or a gold ring in the street.

There is nothing to say to that. The cruelty is breathtaking, like a physical blow.

Eventually John says, “What is it that you need to know?”

Holmes’ eyes light with interest and he sits forward, bracing his elegantly long arms, his elbows against his knees and his hands gesturing into space. He explains. A missing snuff-box leads to a clandestine love affair leads to a murderer. He only needs to speak to one or two more men to reach the end of the link, to find the information.

“And you won’t send your irregulars in,” sighs John.

“Of course not. They are, however they may appear, children. This is hardly suitable for them.”

“Send me.”

Holmes looks at him for a moment. There is interest, a weighing of the suggestion, but it is quickly submerged by visible practical considerations. “Impossible. You don’t know what questions need to be asked. All I need to know is how to seem as natural as possible.”

John sighs. The breath is unusually long, and seems to fill the space between them. All at once, he lets his body relax. He is lounging more than sitting. He turns his face toward the fire and a smile comes over it, flirtatious, pleasant, oddly feminine. “Well, then, love,” he says, his voice losing its polish, becoming warm and completely unremarkable, the kind of voice you might hear dozens of in a certain type of crowded pub and never think twice about, “tell me all about it.”

Holmes smiles. It is abrupt and supernatural. “Fascinating!” he says. The schooling—which can only end, can it not, in an unfortunate bleeding, of blurring Johnny into Watson, of the man he can be behind certain closed doors into the man he must be in daylight—begins.

 

When John marries Miss Mary Morstan, Holmes is nowhere in evidence. He says nothing about it to her. She does not mention it. Presumably there are other matters that weigh on her mind. Their wedding night is a satisfactory but subdued affair. It is unfortunate, most unfortunate, that the only image John can summon to perform his marital duties is one he had hoped to leave behind.

 

The routine of domesticity suits him. He gains a bit of weight. Mary, not knowing, perhaps, how odd her husband is, seems content to manage the house, seems content with at best infrequent conjugal visits. He makes a point of broadcasting his happiness and contentment. He is a respectable man, a doctor, certainly no one who needs to be thought of in any kind of unusual or dangerous light.

When Holmes drops by, it is always sociable, amiable, and generally bearable.

 

When Holmes dies, it is an agony he thought he had lost the capacity for. Mary’s illness worsens soon after. Neglect, perhaps, or only the natural course of her terrible disease, which is not, after all, contagious. Mary has cancer. The lump near her spine, the horrific soreness of her hip, tell clearly that her time has grown limited.

When Mary dies, John’s only real friend left in the world is gone. There is nothing left but work. So he works.

 

When Holmes comes back from the dead, John faints. He comes to, with the tingle of brandy on his lips and a faint memory, as of pressure. Holmes, kneeling beside him, looks contrite. It is a strange expression on his familiar face.

“My love,” says John, before he can think better of it. A smile blooms on Holmes’ face, a smile, as if the world was young again and they were merely children at play. Hide and seek, instead of years of unpunctuated silence.

“Well, obviously,” he says.

John sits up, slowly. Holmes’ hand on his elbow steadies him.

“How I missed you,” John says, apparently unable to stop himself. Holmes’ smiles grows wider.

“I had no idea how I would miss you,” says the world’s greatest detective, and kisses him squarely on the mouth. “Forgive me. Forgive me.”

John, in that moment, has no desire to be angry, then, or ever again. A gift is a gift. He has paid a price for this, an awful price, but most suffering is in vain. This was not.

“All right,” he says. “Just don’t ever do that again.”

Holmes laughs, a quavering treble, and says, “Kiss you? Or fake my own death?”

John kisses him, to clarify the point.


End file.
